DESCRIPTION

DTrace is a framework for comprehensive system- and application-level tracing. Perl is a DTrace provider, meaning it exposes several probes for instrumentation. You can use these in conjunction with kernel-level probes, as well as probes from other providers such as MySQL, in order to diagnose software defects, or even just your application's bottlenecks.

Perl must be compiled with the -Dusedtrace option in order to make use of the provided probes. While DTrace aims to have no overhead when its instrumentation is not active, Perl's support itself cannot uphold that guarantee, so it is built without DTrace probes under most systems. One notable exception is that Mac OS X ships a /usr/bin/perl with DTrace support enabled.

HISTORY

The sub-entry and sub-return probes gain a fourth argument: the package name of the function.

5.16.0

The phase-change probe was added.

5.18.0

The op-entry, loading-file, and loaded-file probes were added.

PROBES

sub-entry(SUBNAME, FILE, LINE, PACKAGE)

Traces the entry of any subroutine. Note that all of the variables refer to the subroutine that is being invoked; there is currently no way to get ahold of any information about the subroutine's caller from a DTrace action.

Traces the exit of any subroutine. Note that all of the variables refer to the subroutine that is returning; there is currently no way to get ahold of any information about the subroutine's caller from a DTrace action.

Traces changes to Perl's interpreter state. You can internalize this as tracing changes to Perl's ${^GLOBAL_PHASE} variable, especially since the values for NEWPHASE and OLDPHASE are the strings that ${^GLOBAL_PHASE} reports.

Traces the execution of each opcode in the Perl runloop. This probe is fired before the opcode is executed. When the Perl debugger is enabled, the DTrace probe is fired after the debugger hooks (but still before the opcode itself is executed).

Fires when Perl is about to load an individual file, whether from use, require, or do. This probe fires before the file is read from disk. The filename argument is converted to local filesystem paths instead of providing Module::Name-style names.

Fires when Perl has successfully loaded an individual file, whether from use, require, or do. This probe fires after the file is read from disk and its contentss evaluated. The filename argument is converted to local filesystem paths instead of providing Module::Name-style names.